


The Burning and the Midnight Oil

by Memsie



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-15
Updated: 2015-09-15
Packaged: 2018-04-20 23:20:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4806044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Memsie/pseuds/Memsie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"She froze at the pain that was reflecting back at her. Though no words passed the lips of the stoic figure before her, somehow she could read him like scripture. The furrow of his brow and slight wavering of his breath; The way the fingers lightly laying over hers shook almost imperceptibly. For a moment-- just a moment-- the carefully sealed file to Agent Daniel Sousa’s deepest self lay open to her." Post Midnight Oil. My more in-depth interpretations (and additions) to that scene.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Burning and the Midnight Oil

Confusion was the first emotion to break through the heavy haze surrounding agent Daniel Sousa. Pain emanated from the base of his skull all the way down his spine as his limbs lay heavy at his sides leaving him vulnerable--one thing Daniel Sousa couldn’t afford to be. 

Fighting against the darkness behind leaden eyelids, Sousa’s mind reeled; trying desperately to process his surroundings. A torrid burning sensation in his chest, his memory struggling to place it as racking coughs filled his lungs. 

Mind racing, his training as an agent kicked in. The echo of his cough was wrong. He wasn’t anywhere he recognized. The smell was foreign as well. Cold, sterile, astringent. But a familiar warm presence fluttered at his side. A cool breeze licked at the left side of his face. An open window. The slight whiff of lavender, and rose oil. Peggy. With effort Daniel forced his eyes open to the warm light.

She came to him in silhouette at first. As the coughing eased, his eyes focused in the warm glow of the infirmary room surrounding him. 

“Carter.... the hell is going on?” He croaked upon seeing the leather restraints obediently holding him to the cot beneath him. His voice came out in laboured almost asthmatic huffs, it reminded Peggy of the first time she’d met Steve--she struck the thought from her mind however, intent on attending to the matter at hand.

“I was about to ask you the same thing... How are you feeling?”  
“Like I swallowed a bag of shrapnel...” he tried to smile but only worry reflected back at him.“...what’s with this?” The agent pulled weakly at his bonds in punctuation. He wasn’t sure what he feared more, the answer, or the fact that his mind was completely at a loss.

“Do you remember anything that happened inside the movie theatre?” Daniel struggled to recall the details as they evaded him like fireflies in the mist. His throat burned and he could kill for some water and an aspirin but he had to focus.  
“There was... uh... some kind of gas...”  
“We found the canister.” Peggy paused and the fog around agent Sousa’s mind began to thin. A pram. No baby just a blanket. A silver canister. A foul smelling mist. “You attacked Agent Thompson.”  
Rage. Suddenly, and all at once he could feel it thrum through him; Recall his hands on Thompson’s throat. The NEED to extricate the breath from him, to watch the blood vessels in his eyes swell and burst. The desperate, worried hands clawing at his shoulders, thin arms that tried to restrain him. 

“I wanted to kill him... wanted to kill everybody.” ...The sensation of the back of his hand striking soft flesh. A flash. Broken glass and... “Oh god... Peggy.” The realization struck him like a bolt of pure lightning. Burning him deep. “I...I hit you.” His eyes scanned her face his heart plunging into his gut at the already purpling skin upon her cheek. I did that. “ I am so sorry...”

“You weren’t yourself.” Peggy’s voice was definitive, dismissive. But her words brought little comfort to Daniel. Tears pricked at the corners of his eyes and his throat thickened. The agent’s hands began to shake within the leather cuffs that bound them. 

“How are you now?” Horrified. Agonized. Frankly afraid. Sousa fought to meet her eyes.  
“I still want to kill Thompson...” he forced his lips into a stiff smirk that hardly touched his eyes. “but no more than usual” 

The joke was meant to ease Peggy’s mind...Hell, ease his mind too. Reassure her that he was just fine. But she saw through his jest-- just as he feared. 

In one movement she shifted forward, her hair sliding from behind her ear and over her shoulder, cascading around her face. Peggy’s hands brushed Sousa’s as she fumbled with the restraints. Easily freeing his left wrist she started on freeing his right hand. His freed hand seized hers. Confusion bloomed in the dark warmth of the eyes flickering to meet his . 

She froze at the pain that was reflecting back at her. Though no words passed the lips of the stoic figure before her, somehow she could read him like scripture. The furrow of his brow and slight wavering of his breath; The way the fingers lightly laying over hers shook almost imperceptibly. For a moment-- just a moment-- the carefully sealed file to Agent Daniel Sousa’s deepest self lay open to her.

His hand dropped hers, a muttered apology followed as he moved to unfasten his other arm. She rose taking a step back from the cot cautiously.

“Daniel... if you’re not okay you can tell me... it’s...”  
“It’s what Peggy?! Alright?” He cringed at his own sharpness, pausing his work on the buckle at his ankle. Peggy stilled. “Look, I can stand to be less than the other men...but lets get one thing straight...” Sousa swung his legs over the side of the cot, his back to her. “What I did will never be alright! It’s inexcusable. Unforgivable” 

Peggy wouldn’t allow the hurt she felt for Sousa in that moment soften her. And she sure as hell wasn’t going to let him take the blame for this. The evening light sifting through the blinds cast Sousa in broken streaks of blue where he sat, his shoulders seized up defensively.

“That was NOT you.” Speaking with conviction she moved to him then, observing the tension in his back, and the way his head lowered slightly and turned from her. Her hand paused on it’s path to the other agent’s shoulder, hovering tentatively.

There was a long pause then. For a few minutes their guarded breaths were syncopated by the evening bustle of the street below drifting in through the open infirmary window. The steady, metronomic ticking of a nearby wall clock measured the time in commiseration until--swallowing the growing tension--Peggy allowed her fingers purchase as she finally spoke “Daniel, look at me... please.”

Sousa remained facing the far wall but slowly, the muscles under Peggy’s fingertips began to shudder. A small sound somewhere between a sigh and sob disentangled itself from it’s confines, deep within his chest. As hard as he tried he couldn’t hold his emotions from spilling out in silent sobs. In seconds the hand on his shoulder was joined with another as arms wrapped around him and the warmth of Peggy’s form pressed against his back. 

Years of suppressed agony seeped from it’s trappings. Years of watching his old man come back stumbling drunk from the docks to beat his frustrations out of the one woman he was supposed to protect, the one who Daniel was too young to protect. Watching his mother reduced to near nothingness each time, only to get back up dust herself off as if it hadn’t happened. Until the time she didn’t get back up. The same rage that took his mother. That same rage that nearly took the woman pressed to his back. The woman he almost... 

“Daniel, Daniel please look at me.” Peggy’s voice cracked, and Sousa turned instinctively towards the sound, eyes closed, his jaw clenching; trying desperately to regain his composure. 

He expected her worry. Expected the brown eyes he could feel searching for answers he couldn’t bring himself to give her. Expected the hand that rubbed slow circles into his back. 

What he didn’t expect were those slender, skillful fingers gliding over his cheekbone and into his hair. In an instant, Peggy Carter’s lips were on his.


End file.
